


something wild (wants the key to its cage)

by Ellis



Category: Being Human, Being Human (UK)
Genre: Gen, M/M, potential spoilers for ep one of series 5
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-02-11
Updated: 2013-02-10
Packaged: 2017-11-28 08:57:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/672593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ellis/pseuds/Ellis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU. Nicholas Cutler has been noticed. His attempts at world domination have not gone unseen, and Dominic Rook of the Department of Domestic Defence is very much in need of a man with Cutler’s talents and… vision. </p><p>“All we require,” Dominic Rook says, “is everything.” Which—after last time—may not necessarily be something Cutler is willing, or able, to give.</p>
            </blockquote>





	something wild (wants the key to its cage)

**Author's Note:**

> I don't own Being Human, otherwise all my faves would be free from pain and shitty writing.

"So," Ruby says softly, slowly stirring her tea with a spoon, "what are you going to do now that it's all over?"

Nick Cutler, the man with a plan--the man with an entire _alphabet_ of plans--shrugs his shoulders.

He doesn't say anything for a moment, biding his time while his eyes track the movement of his sister's spoon, unusually solemn. "I don't know," he says eventually, the words a low truth that he doesn't want to confess. "I had it all planned out, you know. The werewolves, the big reveal, winning him back. We were meant to watch dawn break over the new world-- _our_ new world--together. I gave him a gift. That--what I did, what I'd worked on for  _so long_ , that was meant to be his welcome back gift. A sort of 'welcome home, you insufferable prat'."

Ruby smiles. Frayed around the edges but full of warmth, most ceremoniously unlike her as a person both alive and dead. "Well, you could think about whether or not you're going to go back to work. Since Stoker no longer exists, and nor do the Old Ones--save one, of course--is your employment still  _there_? Does it even exist when the highest of the higher ups were blown to smithereens?"

Cutler shrugs again and sips at his tea, thoughtful. "I'd imagine so. I've never really thought about it--what I'd do if being a solicitor no longer worked for me." Unspoken are four words that irrevocably link back to the humanity they've both lost.  _It's all I know_. 

"What else are you good at?" Ruby tilts her head and rummages through her handbag, producing a small notebook and a pen. Cutler grits his teeth but lets the observation pass unsaid when Ruby's attention returns to him and she clicks the pen and stares at him in the unyielding manner that's won her so many things over the decades. "We'll make a list." 

She clicks the pen again, deliberate, the corners of her smile turning wicked. "Number one." Her hand moves in time with her words, skimming across the lined paper with swift, practiced ease. "You're good with words. An orator. Your memory is longer than average, but _obviously_ we shan't mention how you've lived through all of the events of the past fifty years without ageing a day."

He opens his mouth before he's had a chance to think about what he's going to say. "And what shall I put all those skills down to? _Experience_? You know as well as I do that your list of things I'm good at only exists because--"

"I see where you're going with this, and while I admire your vision, Nick, no, you _can't_ put Hal down as a reference, personal or otherwise." Ruby's smile is sickly sweet. Cutler briefly entertains the fancy of stabbing her with her own pen. 

Instead, he manages, "why couldn't you admire all my  _other_ visions?" and angrily breaks a biscuit in half, dunking it in his tea as though his sole ambition in life is to drown it. Ruby watches, catlike, still scribbling things down in her notebook.

"You've a good working knowledge of the law when you're not using it to get vampires and their indiscretions off the hook. You have commitment, you're creative..." She trails off and snatches the remaining half of the biscuit out of his hand. "If Hal could see your potential all those years ago, what's to say other people won't agree with him? They'll look at you and see a man who's visually pleasing, who dresses well, who has a brain and knows how to use it. They'll see your potential and fall over themselves in their _haste_ to hire you."

Cutler winces. "Out of interest, what's your current job? Personal assistant? It's working nicely for you."

Ruby's responding smirk is positively feline. "I'm many things, dear," she purrs, reaching across the table and patting his cheek. "At the moment I happen to be working for a particularly high-flying magazine, though I'm currently on holiday, here, with you." 

"In _Barry_." Cutler points out, sniffing lightly. He rolls his eyes. "Wouldn't you rather be somewhere sunny?"

"You're changing the subject," Ruby retorts. "I prefer colder climates. _Regardless_ , we have a list to complete, don't we?"

There's a beat. Then,

"No," Cutler sulks, frowning. " _You_ have a list to complete. I..."

"You're what?" Ruby challenges, raising her eyebrows. "Going to go home and mope? Watch your cult film collection? Listen to BBC Radio Four while you cry about your life?"

He narrows his eyes and doesn't say anything for a moment. "Why is everyone convinced I have a  _cult film collection_?"

"So you comment on that but not on the crying and the moping. _Interesting_." Ruby's smile is lightning fast and just as bright. She rises in one fluid motion, a tilt of her head suggesting Cutler should do the same. He follows, reluctant, ultimately suspicious.

"Where are we--"

She loops her arm through his as they leave the café. "Marilyn's still alive."

"Really?" Cutler finds the news unsettling. His question makes steam rise in the air; people around them are huddled in thick coats and scarves, but he and Ruby blend the bare minimum with the height of fashion--Ruby does, in any case. He prefers his suit and his coat; she, as always, opts for a more extravagant style of dress: bright red coat, red lipstick, red heels. Red, red, red. Her namesake.

"Mm." She makes a noncommittal noise in the back of her throat. "She always was tenacious, wasn't she? Practically hangs onto life by her fingernails now. I think she's pushing a hundred--doesn't look a day over eighty, of course. Good genes." She glances at him with a dazzling smile that takes his breath away, and he grins in return. "Evelyn died a while ago, unfortunately."

He doesn't speak, letting himself process the life and death. He should be used to it by now, and yet... "I forgot to keep track." Not an apology, not quite.  _Not yet_.

Ruby keeps on smiling. "I know." Their steps are in sync, their destination as yet unknown. "What are we going to do about you, Nicholas? What are  _you_ going to do?"

"I don't know," he whispers. "As long as I don't sink to the level of Fergus--"

His sister laughs, cold air curling around her. "There is _one_ option, but it's not certain. And by 'not certain', I mean I don't know if anything will come of it. Did you know I've travelled more in my death than Hal has? He's a peculiar little thing, very set in his habits and what he likes. Came to England almost straight after he was turned--don't look at me like that; other vampires have their stories just like you do. One told me you should feel  _blessed_ to be his heir. In Poland he's a legend; in Russia he's a myth. Oh, he's  _travelled_ , but not as widely as I have. He knows things through age and wisdom and experience, but the world doesn't always give up its secrets to people like  _that_."

Wisely staying silent, Cutler focuses on keeping his thoughts decidedly neutral and indifferent. They'll go to his flat, he thinks. She can stay the night. They can clear their heads in the morning. Meanwhile Ruby is still talking:

“I know more about some things than Hal does. I know about the existence of things that Hal’s never dreamt of. I’ve met incubi, I’ve met shapeshifters; you name it, I’ve probably come into contact with it at some point. And you know what?”

“What?” Cutler echoes, feeling the vague stirrings of jealousy. Ruby’s travelled. Ruby’s _seen_ things. And yet _he_...

“This world has cleaners,” Ruby announces grandly. At the look of sheer puzzlement on her brother’s face, she continues. “ _Not_ mop and bucket cleaners, _Nicholas_. People who clean up after us supernaturals, who make sure the shit we pull doesn’t stick and is _never_ seen by human eyes, or heard about by mortal ears.”

It takes Cutler only three seconds to process this.

And then he’s angry, because _now he gets it_.

“How do _you_ know this?”

“Oh, Nicky,” she laughs, catching his hand and forcing him to twirl her around mid-step. “You’d be surprised how _far_ good old fashioned feminine wiles with a little bit of manipulation and a dash of subtle threats gets you.” She winks at him, coquettish. “In the end, I do believe they saw me as an _indispensable_ and _valuable_ vampire of interest.”

His mouth is dry. He thinks of the werewolves, the great reveal, the Master Plan. Of the future so within his reach, the same one that crumbled before his very eyes. “And you, ah, you--”

“Me _nothing_ , Nicky,” Ruby coos, still twirling. “It’s not about _me_ anymore, is it? If they don’t know about you _already_ , they’ll be _dying_ to know about you as soon as possible.” 

" _They_?" he asks as they round a corner and cross the road towards the shabby flat above the Chinese takeaway that serves as his home. "Who's  _they_?"

"If I tell you, I'll have to kill you," Ruby answers in all seriousness, her eyes bright with laughter. "Maybe you'll meet them." She pauses, looks over her shoulder, and then says, "get a move on with letting me inside, Nick; I may be dead but that doesn't mean I can't feel the cold."

He snorts and fumbles with his keys. "I'm surprised that you can feel  _anything_ , Rube, particularly since you appear to have no conscience _whatsoever_." 

"I have a conscience when it comes to some things," she counters, slipping past him when he finally opens the door, "it's just that I'm very selective with what I choose to care about." 

"I know," he answers shortly, nudging her out of the way to get to the kitchen. "You do the whole façade of caring so very well," he adds darkly, opening the fridge and offering her a bottle of blood. When she shakes her head, he shrugs and kicks off his shoes. "Do these cleaners have a name? Or are they like superheroes with nothing in common save a desire to do good?"

Ruby smirks and mimes locking her mouth shut and throwing away the key. "Ask me no questions and I'll tell you no lies."

Cutler snorts again. "You can't answer if your mouth is locked." She rolls her eyes at him but, to her credit, remains silent.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The morning routine doesn't change. Saturday dictates a slower pace, a lie in, but Ruby's presence never leads to a chance in habits for him, and why should it? Why  _would_ it? He rises at ten o'clock, keeps his curtains pulled shut, slips into the shower and lingers there for a further half an hour. His sister sleeps on, understandably more awake at night than during the day: he heard her up until just gone six where she then folded herself up on the settee and resigned herself to rest. She runs on their true clock, the clock that never shies away from the truth of her nature; he runs on the one that keeps him at his most human. 

At its heart, this is what separates them. Nick doesn't think much of it as he dresses in the bathroom: boxers, jeans, socks, shirt, and pads to the kitchen, more aware than he should be of Ruby's current vulnerability. If he were a bitter man, a more ambitious, hating man, he might stake her on all that she has seen alone. If he were more suspicious, he'd question her on her choice of holiday and stake her to be done with it. If he were more the man-- _vampire_ \--he was meant to be, she'd be joining Marilyn in old age.

His fingers close around the neck of a bottle of blood. Calm, he pops the lid off and bins it. There's a certain art to relaxing in mornings, and years of honing himself to appear more human than he will ever be again has long since allowed him to perfect it. He slinks, catlike, into the lounge, where Ruby sleeps on, and then kicks the settee with a devilish smile, thrusting the bottle at her when her eyes open and she hisses, teeth bared, fangs out.

"What time is it?"

"Almost eleven." His innocence doesn't wash; Ruby narrows her eyes and hisses again, hands reaching for the bottle. "You used to be such a morning person."

She drinks deep for a few seconds. "You never used to be this much of a shit." Wipes her hand across her mouth, sits up and tucks her feet under her body. "Is something wrong?"

"Why are you here?"

Ruby yawns. "It's a bit early for the inquisition, isn't it?"

Again: "why are you here?" He's briefly, uncomfortably reminded of an interrogation like this one, with similar questions and ghastlier results. When was that? 1952? He can't remember; the image swims into the forefront of his mind but it's out of focus. Nick doesn't know whether to be grateful or frustrated. He opts for neither.

"I came to see my little brother." Ruby has blood around her mouth. She licks her lips. "I didn't know it was a crime."

"It's not." Now he's annoyed at himself. Frowns. "I want you to take me to them."

"No." Despite having only been awake for a few minutes, Ruby is sharper than she lets on. She takes another swig. "It's not that I don't want to, it's that I can't  _just_ take you to them. They're not vampires, they don't--"

"What are they?"

"Nicholas--"

"I just want to ask a few questions." His throat is dry. He thinks of all the blood in the fridge.

Ruby makes a noise at the back of her throat, rolls her eyes, finishes the bottle off. "It'll start off as a few questions and turn into something else. You were privy to things... _scenes_... as Hal's heir..."

He laughs, humourless. "I haven't got the stomach for interrogations."

"And yet world domination wasn't too much of a stretch for you," she points out. 

There's a beat.

Cutler scratches the back of his neck. "No," he says eventually, quick to add: "but there were underlying reasons for that, and you  _know_ \--"

"They'll find you if they want to," she promises with a yawn, already halfway back to sleep. "You don't find them. They find you. That's how it works."

He opens his mouth to disagree.

" _That's how it works_ ," she reiterates, closing her eyes. Then, softer: "that's how they found me."

  
  


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And that, consequently, is how they find  _him_. Though, to be honest, Cutler is expecting a group of men and not... one scrawny, blond haired, blue eyed man in an immaculate grey suit who comes swanning into his office, all wide eyes and cool smiles, and says:

"Ah, 24601. It's a pleasure to meet you," but doesn't stick out his hand like most people do, and doesn't indicate at all that he's even remotely pleased to have the pleasure of meeting him.

He blinks. Looks down at his stack of papers, glances at his computer screen, counts to five and manages, "my name's Cutler. Nick Cutler."

"Case number 24601," the man repeats like it's obvious and he hasn't heard him, which is starting to grate on Cutler if he's being honest. "Please, sit down."

There is a moment where Cutler wonders what will happen if he grabs this man by the throat, whispers  _my name is Nicholas Cutler_ into his ear, and sinks his teeth into his beating pulse. Then the moment is gone and Cutler reluctantly sits down, instinctively scooping all his papers towards himself. "Right," he says slowly, definitely not liking the feeling of uncertainty making its way through his veins. "Right." Flatly, this time. Unimpressed. "And you are?"

"Dominic Rook," the man says, lowering himself into one of the armchairs with such a stiff posture that Cutler is thrown back fifty years and reminded of Hal. He swallows. "And you are case number 24601, known to all those around you as Nick Cutler, though you were born Nicholas James Cutler in 1927 and died in 1950."

Eyebrows raised, Cutler steeples his fingers and tilts his head. "Interesting," he says, remaining impassive. He feels like he's channelling Hal in 1953 when a pastor accused them both of being demons and Hal coaxed him out from hallowed ground and proceeded to rip him apart. "Dominic Rook, did you say? Why are you here?"

"The very same." He nods curtly and directs himself with such precision that Cutler can't help but be amused. "I'm here for you, Nick Cutler. I have a proposition for you. I would call it a business discussion, but men of the law have no time for such trivial matters, and you are a man of the law, are you not? The certificate on the wall suggests as much, but people of your ilk are skilled in the art of deception."

He straightens and narrows his eyes. "I see." Two words punctuated with heavy disapproval and a slight curl of the lip. "Solicitors are not in the trade of deception, Mr Rook. I am charged with upholding the law and I do that to the best of my abilities."

Rook smiles. "A man after my own heart," he murmurs with a distinct lack of emotion. "You see, Nick Cutler, you and I differ in a vast number of ways, but there are a few meaningful similarities between us. I, too, am charged with upholding the law, though my job ranges beyond the quick and easy fix of ensuring those of your kind weasel their way out of uncomfortable situations. Tell me, Mr Cutler, do you consider yourself a protector of the people?"

 _People_ , Nick thinks dimly. His mind goes to the nightclub, to Rachel, to Marilyn and Evelyn.  _People_. "No." He doesn't fidget despite the discomfort the thoughts cause him. "I merely do my job."

"A man of honesty." Rook lifts his chin and his smile thins at the edges. "Shall we be frank with each other, Nicholas Cutler?"

"If you wish it." Nick shrugs and sits back in his chair, fighting the urge to put his feet up on the desk. Honesty isn't something he regularly invests in, but this man has his attention. "Why not?"

There's a beat as Rook seems to consider what to say. He rests his hands on his knees. "You are a deceiver, Nicholas Cutler. You have deceived those around you for over fifty years, wearing your humanity like a costume to be donned and removed whenever it pleases you. But this is not your fault; this is the way of all Type Twos. To survive, you must be the ultimate predator, and I commend you for your inability to hunt as well as your kin. My sources say you bottle your blood in order to increase the amount of time between each hunt; again, I must commend you. You are a deceiver, but you are a resourceful one."

Nick opens his mouth but Rook holds up a silencing hand.

"Please, allow me to continue. I am aware of your indiscretions. I have seen the nightclub footage with my own two eyes, and individually disposed of every mobile phone containing the footage. I have placed blackout orders on news channels across this country to ensure what occurred at the nightclub was never revealed to anyone, and those who were there and witnessed a werewolf running rampant quietly had their memories of that particular night erased. So, you see: you are skilled in the art of deception, but so am I."

"I see," Nick says, because there's nothing else to say. Hal's stricken face flashes in front of his eyes. He doesn't wince, keeps his face carefully neutral. "That was you." The words come out slowly and taste funny, like ash. "Have you come to tell me off? I've heard ambitious plans of world domination never go down too well."

"Quite." The ghost of a smile flitters over Rook's face. "And yet... not quite. No -- your ambition, though dangerous, though rather barbaric, was executed in a very clever way. You utilised technology to your advantage, something no other Type Two has done before. You shed little blood in the process; your file documents two victims, no more. For a Type Two, you are remarkably restrained in your bloodshed."

Rook's eyes burn into his. Cutler doesn't know what to say for a moment, for two moments, for three, and then four. "What can I do for you?"

"You can work for me," Rook says softly - so softly that, at first, Cutler thinks he hasn't said anything. "There are benefits, of course. Blood. Constant employment. Secrecy. What we do is delicate, and it requires the utmost discretion. Family ties are ill advised - in fact, ties with anything should be severed."

Cutler looks around at his office. At the papers, his laptop, the certificate on the wall. The stark colours. "Secrecy is a benefit?"

"For us and for you." Dominic Rook smiles. "Vampires must exist in secret, wouldn't you agree? Imagine the chaos if their existence came to light."

Neither of them touch upon the subject of world domination. Cutler licks his lips. "You're  _them_."

"Them?" Dominic almost laughs; Cutler can see it brimming at the very edges of his face. He stifles it. Kills it as soon as it's born. No, before then. "I am not  _them_ , Nicholas Cutler. I am Dominic Rook of the Department of Domestic Defence."

 _They have a name then_ , Cutler thinks but does not say. Rook's eyes have a glacial bite to them. "What would this... department... ask of me if I joined? Hypothetically speaking."

"All we require," Dominic Rook says smoothly, slowly, and Cutler is captivated by the movement of his mouth as the words fall out, "is everything."

There's a twist in his chest. An age old knife twists in between his ribs, below his heart. "I see." His mouth is dry. He remembers bleeding out on the floor of the police station, screaming. "Can I think about it?"

Dominic Rook's smile is like knives. "Welcome to the department, Nicholas Cutler."


End file.
